London-based travel app Cool Cousin has secured a $2m (£1.5m) Seed funding round led by Elevator Fund.
Cool Cousin is an app and website with communities of locals in cities across the globe who share information about their favourite bars, restaurants and other neighbourhood hotspots.
Users can choose to follow their preferred contributors, or ‘cousins’, and see their favourite spots marked on a map.
The firm, founded in 2016, has hundreds of ‘cousins’ in more than 45 cities around the world, with thousands of users viewing their guides and insights while planning trips, or while visiting a new neighbourhood, town or city.
“Our lead into Cool Cousin’s Seed round is the largest first check we have written in our portfolio to date,” Ori Glezer, partner at Elevator Fund, told TechCrunch.
“We were extremely impressed by the Cool Cousin team and believe, as they do, in the difference between tourists and travellers. If Cool Cousin can make travellers feel at home across the globe, they will redefine the category completely,” he added.
Elevator Fund is a Tel Aviv-based VC fund that invests in early-stage tech startups. Its portfolio companies include HealthTech firm Talkspace; SalesPredict, which was acquired by eBay; and AdTech firm Inneractive, which was acquired by RNTS.